Long and short number scales?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
Is "billion" a thousand million (10^9) or a million million (10^12)? Numberphile video:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-52AI_ojyQ&t=5m30s
TL;DR: billion = bi-million = two of 10^6 = 10^{6x2} = 10^12. trillion = tri-million = 10^{6x3} = 10^18, and not 10^12. quadrillion, pent….
Conversely, plenty of languages continue to use long scale as the standard numbering system, and it used to be standard in English. Other cultures and languages use different systems altogether.
So, let's rephrase the question.
What's the point of the short scale?
The fact that something has always been done is not a reason to do it again.
First, I have not ignored the question. My answer to the question is right there is in my dissection and rephrasing of the question.
Second, the question as asked doesn’t make sense. Number scales are arbitrary; there is no ‘point’ for any one scale over another. Long, short, Chinese, Indian — so long as your interlocutor understands what you mean in the language and culture in which you’re speaking, neither has any more point than another.
Which is basically what my comment said, and plenty of people have thus far been able to interpret that without me needing to explain such.
There's no reason to switch to the short scale, that's the reason I guess.
AFAICT, the long scale was the original one. It was the short scale that was "invented" later, so the question should be: why was the short scale created?
"Hacker News is," he said, "a website." (American)
vs.
"Hacker News is", he said, "a website". (British)
We Americans are taught to always put punctuation inside the quotation marks, with a few limited exceptions.
I gather our cousins across the sea are taught not to do this.
It's started to bleed into my own writing given the international nature of the teams I work with.
[1]: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/150703/why-is-th...
Worse, it only applies to lines ending in a period. Those are extremely rare because hand-set lines typically ended with filler, in order to make all lines in a block of text equal length. See for example https://letterpresscommons.com/setting-type-by-hand/: “ As you are setting your line of type and finish the last word of the line, you’ll need to fill out the rest of your line with word spacing material”
I also would think most exclamation marks would not be wider than periods and commas. Why, then, are those typically rendered outside closing quotation marks?
https://faqs.cs.uu.nl/na-dir/alt-usage-english-faq.html says
“According to William F. Phillips (wfp@world.std.com), in the days when printing used raised bits of metal, "." and "," were the most delicate, and were in danger of damage (the face of the piece of type might break off from the body, or be bent or dented from above) if they had a '"' on one side and a blank space on the other. Hence the convention arose of always using '."' and ',"' rather than '".' and '",', regardless of logic.”
I don’t see obvious objections to that explanation.
the comma is not part of the quote, so it shouldn't be inside, typographical systems be damned. i tend to put it outside, to the horror of (american) grammar snobs everywhere. i think programming is what got me to seriously reconsider the placement.
It's interested how technologies of the time affect grammar and language.
The opposite story I head was the the Chinese invented movable type before the West, but it's a lot less practical for languages without an alphabet.
Not spelling, but I prefer the way of referring to brackets in the UK. It's simpler and logical:
() = brackets
[] = square brackets
{} = curly brackets
In the US:
() = parentheses (what a mouthful :-)
[] = brackets
{} = braces
I'd also use the term "curly braces" over just "braces" but either is acceptable.
(At least that's the UK usage I'm familiar with)
There is a difference between how brackets are referred to in mathematics[1] vs usage in written everyday English: https://mathworld.wolfram.com/AngleBracket.html
[1] Another interesting difference between UK and US English:
UK = Maths (shorthand for mathematics)
US = Math
< and > are less-than and greater-than, or angle brackets if the real angle brackets are unavailable.
<meta content="Microsoft FrontPage 12.0" name="GENERATOR" />edit: Being upstairs anyway for other reasons, I've just had a look. It's just two <div> elements as columns in an old-school grid style system that predates CSS Grid. Text is flowed within the columns using a text-align: justify; rule, so the impressiveness of the result is properly credited to the browser rather than the site design.
<p style="columns:3;">kerb vs curb (n) - again, curb is older, but somehow a spelling error^W varient caught on in England. In this case, it is unfortunate since Scottish people allegedly pronounce “curb” but write “kerb” (they pronounce ur like u+r and er like e+r, not as a single sound). So this one is not just not an option, it's actively hostile to many British peoplee
-or vs -our: unless you will spell governour and use other like spellings, you have no historical leg to stand on so you might as well allow both variants.
program is the older spelling, programme is preferred by those who are jealous of the French.
I never understood the logic of swapping -re to -er in theatre, centre tho. I mean, why only -re but not -le? why don't Americans tickel and cuddel? Surely the logic is the same. So I think you can mount your high horse here.
In the kitchen, the American standard favors the French: herb (herb vs urb) and filet (fill-it vs fill-eh)
In a car, it is reversed: chassis (shassy vs chassy) and coupe (coop-eh vs coop)
Others that differ include (all where Brits favour a francophone pronounciation) papier maché, en route, double entendre